


Apology Not Included

by MorteLise



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Raven has regrets, not the greatest reunion, now with more optimism and enraged dads, post v5, profanity courtesy of Raven, v5 stinger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-10 11:35:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13500944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteLise/pseuds/MorteLise
Summary: Still reeling from the loss she suffered in the Vault, Raven returns to Patch to have a one-sided argument that she somehow manages to lose.Part two: While attempting to get the upper hand in her deteriorating reunion, Raven is forced to make some uncomfortable realizations about herself and her past mistakes with team STRQ.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been almost two decades since Raven last set foot in Patch without wings. 

The pull of it reasserts itself the moment she shifts back—as though it’d been only last week that she’d deluded herself into thinking they could all have made a home there, rather than her teenage daughter’s entire lifetime ago. It’s still an intimately familiar ache, even after all these years; anchoring her feet to the ground, tugging at her gut, filling her lungs with every inhale of crisp, clean air and whispering in the back of her mind, _stay, stay_.

 As though she could, after what she’s done. After all the lost time and burnt bridges, after the Vault and Vernal’s dead eyes and Qrow’s “We’re not family anymore” and Yang—well, just everything that had happened with Yang.

 But as she stands there, she wants to.

 She’d asked Ozpin if Patch was haunted once; if there was some supernatural compulsion on the island that made her and her brother want to give up a lifetime of wanderlust and family loyalty in exchange for some sliver of contentment, and he’d laughed in reply. It wasn’t until after she stopped trusting him that she realized it wasn’t much of an answer.

 And now here she is, back in Patch, when she promised herself she’d never risk the temptation again.

 She lifts her head, taking another deep breath of air untainted by smoke or blood or the oily smell of Grimm, and smiles tightly. “I’m not here to apologize,” she says.

 The words hang in the air a moment before they’re absorbed by oppressive silence. It’s fine, it’s not as though she expects an answer.

 “I only had one apology left in me and I gave it to Yang. I figured you’d find that fair.” The silence swallows that, too. Raven feels the smile slide off her face at the one-sidedness of the conversation and turns away. Leisurely. Confident. Playing at restlessness instead of admitting she’s been pried open and left so hollow she’s come crawling back for consolation to the only person that would still take her back.

 She should be free. She _is_ free—Salem’s eyes have turned from her and she should be taking her tribe and running as far and as fast as she can away from the conflict.

 That’s all she wanted. Freedom. And she told herself no cost would be too high.

 So of course the universe presented one that was.

 Now there’s an empty victory.

 “And anyway, shouldn’t you be satisfied enough knowing that you were right? Here I am, congratulations. Feel free to collect your money from any wagers you might’ve just won. Start with Qrow while you’re at it, I’m sure he owes you plenty.”

 She takes another breath and crosses her arms, turning on one heel and well aware she's fully pacing now, eyes averted and shoulders hunched and defensive. Well, that show of confidence hadn’t lasted long, had it?

 “I was right, though, wasn’t I? About how bad it would get? Between Beacon and the CCT and the Fall Maiden and Ozpin failing badly enough that he’s lost that face we were all so accustomed to. And now Haven, too.” She grimaces and admits, “Haven’s still standing. But with its professors dead and its headmaster turned traitor, I don’t see it reopening any time soon.”

So they stopped one crisis. It’s far from enough to stop Salem.

Still, for all of Salem’s inevitability, Ozpin’s ragtag team has beaten some impressively high odds.

And in the end Fall had been underwhelming, too—the woman who had ripped the power from a Maiden and shaken the kingdoms with little more than a handful of followers and a few choice words turned out to be a wretched, greedy, overconfident brat entirely over-dependent on her pawns and her Maiden abilities for someone who only had months of experience.

But time is subjective, especially for a monster like Salem, if she wanted to, she could—

For the sake of the Branwen tribe—

Raven couldn’t hope to—

Something is climbing up her throat—panic, guilt, sorrow, one of the dozens of emotions she’s ignored since discovering Salem’s mere existence—and she can’t find a way to force it back down. There’s water in her knees and she wills herself to keep standing.

She’s known, always, who she’d go running back to if she ever wavered. And even after all this time she can’t stand the judgment.

Raven swallows, but the lump in her throat remains. “You all thought I was too self-centered to consider how you’d feel if I left,” she says, tightening her grip on herself and squeezing her eyes shut. She laughs, broken and mocking. “But I did.”

There’s a burning in her eyes now, what little composure she’d managed to maintain breaking down, and she hates it. “I knew how many ties it would break. Banked on it, in fact, made it a lot easier knowing there wasn’t much to come back to. Sure, Qrow pretended to try, what with the twin factor and all those years of shared experience, and why wouldn’t he give his all to drag back a resource his precious Ozpin had spent so much time and energy on. And Yang is—” she inhales shakily, “Yang has my steel. You can’t take that from me, it’s there and every time her eyes flash red it’s like—” she laughs again, and something hot rolls down her cheek. “But you can tell who raised her. Too much of you in her to let injustice stand, I don’t know why I thought I had a chance. And in the end, that’s the funniest part of all. The part of her that couldn’t forgive me wasn’t you, it was me.”

She feels it crack, and couldn’t say what exactly ‘it’ is. Her poise. Her feigned conviction. Her entire fucking disaster of a life.

She’s weeping now, openly, as she finally turns and collapses in front of the headstone. “Because I always knew you’d forgive me, Summer.

“Only now I can’t even have that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back when this was a oneshot it was originally supposed to end with Raven's reunion with Taiyang but I was worried about that second half with real live angry person dialogue kinda spiraling out of control length and plotwise, and therefore ended it where I did. But then I was asked whether Tai reunion would happen and that was all the excuse my brain needed.
> 
> I may or may not have been right to worry about the second half.
> 
> But regardless here is part two, three times as long and now with 100% more disgruntled Taiyang!

Raven’s always hated crying.

It’s loud, obnoxious, a glaring sign of weakness, detrimental to all observational skills, and involves secreting a lot of disgusting fluids that end in dehydration. And the so-called benefits are bullshit—what she feels at the end of it isn’t catharsis but a sort of dull emptiness paired with a headache and a reminder that she’s not the type to carry around tissues.

She must look terrible. Puffy-eyed and sprawled on the ground, knees smeared with dirt and grass-stains.

How the mighty have fallen and all that.

“You had to pick an open field,” she says to the headstone. “From what I remember most people around here would pick a cemetery and we just settle for grave markers over in Anima, but no, normal’s not good enough for Summer Rose, you needed to take your introversion to the next level and make people travel out into the middle of nowhere just to say hi to the reminder that you’re dead.” She shoves a tangle of hair out of her face and sniffles. “And the planning this would’ve taken—did you just love this place so much that you told Tai ‘hey, please bury me here someday?’ Is there a physical will you wrote this down in and took to a lawyer? We were in our mid-twenties, why were you thinking about dying?”

Of course, she’d been right to.

Summer Rose. Always right.

Should’ve put that on the headstone.

Raven sits back, so her legs stop cramping and she hopefully looks like slightly less of a mess.

“I suppose that level of foresight is the reason Ozpin made you team leader,” she says wryly. She manages a flicker of a smirk. “Always resented that. But then I guess the only person that ever died on your watch was you.”

Grief wells up in her chest again, and her Aura starts humming with the distant warning of approaching Grimm. Took them long enough, she was beginning to think she was too wrung out to even be properly sad. She shifts to a kneel and puts a hand on her sword, but doesn’t bother getting up yet.

“It’s not like a baby monitor, you know,” she says, pushing out the words before those stupid fucking tears come back. “Sure, I call it a bond, but it’s not like my Semblance keeps me updated on how you’re doing, it just opens a gate from me to you. Only time I know what’s happening on the other end is when the bond breaks.”

And what a day that had been.

The tears start forming again despite her best efforts, but this time she successfully chokes them back. “You had to have known,” she says. “With all your ridiculous planning. You had to have realized it wasn’t something you could handle alone. But let me guess—the job had to be done, you didn’t want to risk your girls losing both parents, and you didn’t want Qrow blaming himself if things went south. Your goddamn nobility was worth more to you than your life.”

It’s a hopeless delusion, trying to rebuild Summer’s death into a scenario where any of them could have done something to prevent it. None of them even fully knew what had happened. Raven hadn’t expected to learn anything illuminating by scoping out the funeral, but asking directly hadn’t helped, either. At first she’d thought Qrow was too distraught to remember the details, and then she’d thought he was staying quiet out of loyalty to Ozpin, but soon it became clear that even the great and terrible Oz himself hadn’t realized he’d sent his fearless warrior off to die when he gave the order.

It was supposed to be a routine mission. But it wasn’t.

She’s spent more time than she cares to admit wondering what could have been. Telling herself that if she’d known, she would have done something about it. That Summer’s obsession with heroism had gotten her killed.

As though she would’ve said yes if Summer had come calling. As though she’d said yes any time any of them ever had.

(She thinks of Ruby Rose with her outstretched hand and pleading silver eyes like the shadow of her own mother’s ghost, pretending someone she’d never met could’ve had a place in their ragtag band when Raven had already sold them out, what did she— What if Raven had— But no, history is endless repetition, there’s no version of the story where she’d have taken the offer then anymore than she had with Summer.)

“I wish I could have saved you,” she says instead, because here and now, with nothing but hindsight and regret, that much is true.

The buzzing in the back of her skull gets louder, and she starts hearing the rustle of underbrush to match. Great, she hadn’t wanted to continue this conversation anyway.

But as she stands to meet whatever’s caught her scent, there’s the keening yelp of a Beowolf and the warning abruptly dies.

And Raven finds herself faced with the prospect of an actual, much worse conversation as Taiyang steps out of the forest.

He looks the same, even now. A little more tired, maybe. And that much anger is new. But it’s been over a decade since she last looked at him with human eyes and he’s aged the most gracefully out of any of them, not a wrinkle on his face or a strand of grey streaking his wheat-blond hair. The domestic life must agree with him.

She knew it would.

She’d planned on getting around to see him eventually, but not this soon. She’d like to think she wouldn’t have ended up putting it off indefinitely if left to her own devices, but it does speed things along that he’s found her first.

“Yang’s in it now,” she says without preamble, aiming to diffuse the singular fury in his expression before they end up verbally eviscerating each other, “deeper than we ever were.” She smiles grimly. “Swiped Knowledge right from under Salem’s nose.”

Taiyang’s anger fizzles out in an instant, bless him. Tai’s a patient man with a heart so full of love she’s always been able to figure out just what to say to get him to forget his argument. It’s why they never fought.

It’s why they never could have lasted.

“How?” he asks faintly.

His expression is an admirably even split between horrified shock and sickened worry. She wonders how much effort he’s put into keeping his precious daughters out of the war.

Probably as much as Qrow and Ozpin have put dragging them into it. Why did Tai even let them go to Beacon?

She crosses her arms, better at feigning nonchalance with a living, breathing person than with a decorated rock representing the most disturbingly perceptive person she’s ever known. “You have to ask? She ended up right in the crossfire the second I sent her to Qrow. Ozpin’s back already, by the way, if you were wondering if that was a real thing. New kid doesn’t look like he’s even hit puberty.” She raises a judgmental eyebrow. “What did you think would happen when you let her go?”

Alright, maybe she does want this argument.

Tai’s jaw actually drops. “Are you really going to stand there and lecture me on parenting?” he says incredulously. “Do you remember the part where you _left_ eighteen years ago?”

And oh, she’d been hoping he’d say that, she’s had just the right response lined up for years.

“Well, it’s not like you bothered coming after me either, did you?” she drawls. “Took you no time at all to move on.”

She’s thought of it that way for so long—as the snide remark she had lined up for whenever he finally dredged up the nerve to call her out—that it takes the sick, churning sensation in her stomach to remind her that she’s held on to it for so long because of how much his answering dismissal of her had hurt.

And Summer—well, Summer had tried once or twice, and Raven had nearly wavered until she’d found out who Tai had moved on _to_.

(Summer had always put her individual relationships above any perceived romantic rivalries. Raven never understood why Summer thought she would be noble enough to do the same.)

Taiyang’s blue eyes narrow. They’re not as bright as they used to be. She wonders how much of that is her fault.

“You left me,” he grits out through clenched teeth, “and our three month old daughter. Didn’t even bother coming back from the mission, let alone say goodbye.” He laughs, clipped and cutting, and she’s always taken some measure of pride at that kind of thing, at turning kind men cruel; dragging out the worst in people to remind them how fabricated their moral high ground is, but she can’t here. Not with Tai. Not when she knows the jagged edges she’s revealed are just his broken heart. “Kept trying to drag Qrow back with you, too. So I had a baby to take care of and just one admittedly amazing person left that I knew I could rely on, and I did what I could to make it work.”

They shouldn’t be doing this here.

But there’s nowhere else Raven would rather do it—Qrow’s written her off and it didn’t take this confrontation for her to know that Tai has as well. So if she’s going to own up to anything, she’s doing it while Summer has her back.

Or at least the shitty marble stand-in she has to settle for.

“Okay,” she says, chin lifted. Cold. Aloof. She’s lead her people for eighteen years, she can keep face with one man. “Fine.” She waves a prompting hand. “So what’s your excuse now?”

He stares at her. “What?”

Oh, come on, Tai.

She smirks and holds up a finger. “One daughter leaves. Fine, she’s the precocious type, her uncle adores her and has wings, and you can’t exactly leave the traumatized one on her own.”

She holds up a second finger. “But both? Yang healed, she left, and she came running straight to _me,_  waltzed her way right into the heart of a bandit camp on the gamble that her wayward mother would recognize her after all these years, and it wasn’t even for answers or closure or some glorified fabrication of a family reunion. It was just as a resource. Fastest way to get from point A to point B. And point B was the fucking war you had to know my brother already dragged his shiny new silver-eyed warrior into.” 

She cocks her head to the side, eyebrow snidely raised again. “You want to talk to me about abandonment? Then tell me why you’re sitting here gardening in Patch instead of out there with your darling girls.” 

She knows why. 

She came here ready to counter his reasoning, even; Taiyang’s always been the grounded one of their team, and after graduation and their induction into all that mysterious intrigue started up he started taking that more literally. When Summer nearly broke down because that last civilian was literally impossible to save; when Raven alienated every single alumni in their year choosing friendly fire over risking her own teammates; when Qrow’s Semblance nearly got himself and half a dozen others killed flaring up to newfound heights mid-combat; there Taiyang was, home waiting for them with bandages, a warm meal, and a kind word. Their anchor in the storm. 

He hadn’t always been that way; had started out their freshman year at Beacon as brash and ambitious as any of them, but as time went on and they ended up deeper in the fairy tale nonsense—Summer unlocking her absurd mystical destiny and the twins flinging themselves recklessly into the fight by accepting their own little slice of Ozpin’s curse like idiots—he’d watched his teammates drift further and further into the unspeakable horrors of Salem’s war and decided that the best thing he could do was provide emotional support and stability. A haven of normality, just like Patch. 

That kind of attitude was why she’d fallen for him, in the end. 

‘Consistency’ isn’t a word that exists where Raven’s from. Neither is compassion. But Taiyang has both in excess, and she’d been captivated by it in spite of herself, buoyed by a heady combination of her insipid love for him and Summer’s contagious optimism. 

(Qrow, forever more insecure than she, had rocketed right past looking for consistency and gone for eternity instead, so once Ozpin tossed his _terribly tragic_ curse of immortality on the table, she should’ve realized she’d lose him.) 

But one day she’d realized it couldn’t last—Tai has ‘constant’ and Summer had ‘indomitable’ and Ozpin has fucking ‘eternal’ but none of that can hold a candle to ‘inevitable,’ and that’s what Salem is. 

(She’d been made, on that mission she hadn’t come back from. That particular servant of Salem had gotten very dead at her hands, but he’d known her name and she hadn’t gotten out unscathed, and huddling there in the dark, covered in her own blood and his and not even daring to risk a portal out in case he’d had backup that could track her, the thought of their little home in Patch hadn’t been comforting or inspiring but the reminder of a frail, superficial, barely-conceived target waiting to be hit, and in that moment she’d had enough of the war and anything that could be used against her in it. Why bother going back when she didn’t know what she’d be bringing with her?) 

Tai’s here waiting because that’s all any of them ever asked him to do. And when it wasn’t enough, he hadn’t known how to do anything else. 

Well, fuck that. If she has to get out of her comfort zone, so does he. 

Tai’s face crumples at her words, but he still tries to defend himself. “Signal needs me,” he snaps. “Duty to your tribe’s part of what kept you away, right? Well, I have one to all my students—” 

“For fuck’s sake, I’m a _leader_ , you’re just a teacher,” she shoots back. “Someone else can teach those kids.” The smile she flashes him is all sharp edges. “My dedication to family, that’s what you said you loved so much about me, right? Only you thought I picked the wrong one. So here I am, telling you to pick yours, and you’re whining about your goddamn job.” 

Taiyang opens his mouth. Closes it. Sighs. 

“What’re you doing here, Raven?” he asks. 

Took him long enough. God, he really is too trusting. 

Qrow would’ve opened with that—well, no, Qrow would’ve spat out a “what do you want” before she could even get a word in, snappish and hostile now that years of contrasting world views have frayed their bond into jaded familiarity. (And yet he still had the gall to look betrayed, like he had any trust left where she’s concerned. She can’t believe that. She won’t.) 

Ozpin would’ve let her get through her opening lines about Yang and the Relic, patient to a fault, and then asked what she’d been doing _there_ , letting her race her way into incrimination before dismantling her argument with a careful, manipulative hand. 

(Summer would’ve hugged her on sight, time and tribulation be damned. Raven would’ve had an armful of Summer Rose before she could even put a sentence together, unabashedly joyful and relieved, and with that one simple gesture Summer could’ve commanded the conversation any way she wanted to. It was the little things that had made Summer really dangerous.) 

But Tai sits and listens. Tai’s always sat and listened, and unlike Ozpin he doesn’t do it so he can get the most dirt possible on the other person before he gets his piece in. He’s just genuinely interested in listening. 

All give, where she’s all take. 

How fucking textbook. 

But here and now, they still have two things in common. 

They want out of this fight. 

(She’d run like the bandit she is, but that doesn’t mean she can’t recognize what Tai’s doing, sitting on his ass with his sunflowers. He’s their constant, yes, but the best way to stay a haven from conflict is to stay the fuck out of it, even if he’d never said it aloud. Considering the half of their team that had kept fighting the good fight is currently dead or irreparably screwed up, she thinks they made the better choice.) 

And they love their daughter. 

Even if after a lifetime of distance Raven had knowingly, willingly, at Yang’s own goddamn behest thrown her right in Salem’s line of fire, painted the largest target possible across her own child’s back because she couldn’t find the backbone to take the risk herself— 

Hush. She’s making up for it now. 

“I’m your wakeup call, Tai,” she says, finally dropping his name like a knife in the back. “Your past come back to haunt you.” She flashes him a bitter, rueful smile. “Just like it did me.” 

He just looks at her. 

What, does she have to spell it out for him? 

She scowls. “Well, you had to know I didn’t come here just to say hi."

“You haven’t said hi,” Tai shoots back, then gestures to the headstone. “Not to me, anyway, and I don’t think Summer can hear you.” 

He—he’d actually gone there. 

She forces a humorless laugh through bared teeth. “Don’t go bringing Summer into our lover’s spat, _dear_.” 

“Why not?” Taiyang snaps, and Raven feels a brief, bittersweet thrill as she looks at him because for a moment his eyes blaze as bright as they used to. “Our family wasn’t just us, it was the team.” He shakes his head. “Leaving was one thing, but when you couldn’t even bother after the funeral—” 

She wishes she’d kept her mask; the red wall of rage clouding her vision is so vivid it takes all her willpower to stop her Maiden powers from flaring with it. “I’ll have you know I—” 

“Went to the funeral?” Tai finishes, and smiles grimly at the stunned look on her face. “Hung around for a few days as a bird?” He starts looking annoyed at her continued shock. “What, was I not supposed to recognize you?” 

“I just thought,” she says with badly faked indifference as she tries to scrape together her dignity, “you would give me some credit for that.” 

He actually snorts in derision. “For what, mourning like everyone else? Getting your own closure? We all loved Summer, Raven. But if you actually wanted to honor her you would’ve bit the bullet then and helped the rest of us move on, not skulked around in the fringes until you were able get over her yourself.” 

What little poise she’d managed to hold on to crumbles into wounded silence. 

She’d forgotten, somehow. 

Tai had been the one to show her that kind wasn’t the same as weak. Summer, too, but in a drastically different way—Summer had been a current, a virus, a bright shining light that swept everyone around her up in her romantic view of the world. She’d actually been terrible at comfort, so instead she’d done her best to ensure people weren’t sad in the first place. But Taiyang took whatever was given to him, patient and understanding, and used it like a bludgeon on anyone stupid and selfish enough to give him too much. 

And Raven really has given him too much. 

But. She still has one card to play. 

She takes a breath, and is disgusted to hear it tremble. “At least I got the news out,” she says, and smirks as his brow furrows in confusion. “Qrow didn’t tell you. Figured he wouldn’t.” She waves a dismissive hand, only just realizing she’d been resting it on the hilt of her sword for a while now, fully defensive. “I know with Ozpin it can be hard to tell what the truth is at face value, but it really was supposed to be the routine solo mission they put down on paper. One week max and no need for backup. And yet, three days into her mission when he was supposed to be out on his own, Qrow just magically shows up to tell you the news. You didn’t wonder about that?” 

She’d been so ready to find someone to blame when she felt that bond snap. So she’d gone running straight to Qrow and nearly gotten them both killed interrupting his reconnaissance mission, and after hadn’t even given him the time to catch his breath before she’d slammed him against the wall herself, screaming for answers. 

The dawning horror on his face still haunts her. 

She’d been—angry, then. Angry was easier than sad. Angry enough to believe her brother was complicit in it somehow and just too shaken up by the news to give her any answers. So she’d left him there, crumpled on the floor of some tavern in the middle of nowhere, to look for answers she’d never found and for someone who might not exist to take her rage out on. Left him to cut his own mourning short so he could attempt what ended up being an unsuccessful hunt for Summer’s body, to deliver the news to the devastated family—to _his_ family, to once again take all the misguided blame as the bearer of bad news— 

Huh. In hindsight, that’s probably the moment she lost him for good. 

(Haven couldn’t have done it. There’d been nothing left by then. Just resentment and the occasional necessary information exchange.) 

Taiyang just shrugs. “Qrow just has a way of knowing, sometimes,” he says. 

In other words, he’d thought Qrow was involved in it, too. But unlike her, he hadn’t tried to hold a grudge. 

Of course not, he’s Taiyang Xiao Long. 

And yet with her, he still doesn’t look convinced. 

She soldiers on. “If it weren’t for me, it could’ve been weeks before you found out,” she says. “Your sweet little girls up and waiting every night, all of you expecting her to walk back through the door one day until you accepted it wasn’t going to happen. At least this way you knew.” 

The way he hadn’t when she’d left. She’d revealed her survival eventually, but it’d been long enough that the bridges she’d intended to burn lit up like kindling over her betrayal of trust. 

“Great. Thanks,” Taiyang says tonelessly. “But it wasn’t enough to make you come back then, so what’re you doing here now? Besides trying to convince me we’re both terrible parents?” 

How many brain cells has he lost over the years? She’s already told him; the war is here, Salem’s on the rise, the goddamn Relics are in play, and he’s hunkered down in his quaint cottage home while his own daughters are— 

While Yang is— 

“I failed Yang,” she blurts out, and is mortified to hear herself say the words. 

But that’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? 

“Every damn decision I made with her until now was to keep her out of this,” she says, unable to stop herself now that she’s started. “And God knows a lot of them were selfish ones, but once I realized how close she was to getting dragged into it, I did everything in my power to keep her out. At first.” 

The tears are coming back. Of course they are. 

She scrubs her face angrily, but finds she’s not done digging herself into that hole, desperate to talk about it even if it’s less likely win her argument than lose him forever. 

“We were down in that Vault together,” she says. “Just me and her and the Relic.” She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to block out the memory. “And all she did was ask me to make a choice. Which one of us would risk Salem’s wrath. And I chose.” She opens her eyes to look at him and wishes she hadn’t. She can already tell what it means. 

Tai’s just staring at her, face twisted in rage or anguish or both. He turns away. 

“I can’t take that back, and I can’t make it right,” she says, desperate to fill the growing silence. “None of them trust me and frankly they’re right not to. There’s nothing I can do to make up for it. There’s nothing I can give them. Except you.” 

She laughs, and it’s cracked and brittle. “She’s amazing, you know that right? The best parts of the three of you. Only thing she got from me was a knack for holding grudges. But after everything she’s been through, she’s going to need her dad, Tai, so man up and get out there.” 

The words hang. The silence stretches on. And suddenly she’s hyper aware of where she is again, Tai refusing to face her and Summer dead at her back, and she would give anything, anything at all, to be twenty years younger and _happy_.

To be back with them. 

To be better. 

Raven might have one last card to play, after all. Her pride. 

“Please,” she whispers, and bows her head, defeated. “Help her. I know I can’t.” 

Yang’s right. She isn’t strong enough. 

She hears him exhale, long and slow. She hears him turn, but doesn’t look up to meet his eyes. 

“Okay. Do it.” 

A weight she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying drops from her shoulders. “Right,” she says, straightening her back and striving for professionalism. “Might want to activate your Aura first; they’ll probably shoot first and ask questions later assuming you’re me.” 

There’s a wearied ‘just how bad was it’ question in his expression, but he nods instead of asking it. She slices open the portal and steps aside so he can walk through. 

Tai claps a hand on her shoulder as he passes her. She’s surprised at how much she missed his touch. “You have to know I can’t forgive you,” he says, tired and sad, and those would’ve made for solid parting words but then he manages a weak chuckle and adds, “But I know Summer would.” 

Raven looks at him at that, and has just enough time to absorb the unanticipated return of the sly, mischievous glee that had preceded such hit pranks as ‘hot pink hair dye in all the academy shampoo bottles’ and ‘get the ignorant new guy to wear a skirt on the first day of school’ before his hand drops to her waist and he drags her through the portal with him. 

Back to the people she’s emphatically betrayed and disappointed. Back to the fight against the incredibly dangerous people she’s also betrayed. Back to a room that, with Vernal’s tragic demise, will likely contain every remaining person she’s bonded with and therefore render her portals useless as an exit strategy. 

This isn’t Taiyang-style vengeance, oh no. Too karmic for that. Too optimistic. Too ‘I trust you to make the right choices this time around.’ 

Plus Tai had said who’d given him the idea. 

Raven gets one last glimpse at the headstone as he drags her through. She could swear it looks smug. 

Somehow, Summer had even planned ahead for this. Closest thing possible to a team STRQ official reunion. Despite it all, Raven can’t help a rueful grin. She should’ve known, really. 

Summer Rose wouldn’t let eighteen years and her own death stop her from saying ‘I forgive you.’


End file.
